Tag: Authors Guild

Indie writers: Read this post now in case you decide to get a traditional publisher to publish your paper copies. Especially if you had (or will have) an agent negotiate the deal. Because much of what I’m going to discuss here applies to paper books, not ebooks. This is one of those areas where you, the indie who has gone hybrid, is most likely to get screwed.

In fact, this area is where writers have been getting screwed since some publisher thought to change their contracts in the last 1990s—and then all the other publishers followed suit. (How is this not collusion? Oh…Department of Justice…)

Discount clauses always send a ting of discomfort through me, and not just because the things are damaging to writers’ careers and writers’ incomes. But because they are one of those let’s-screw-the-writer clauses that got added into contracts in the past twenty years or so.

I want to support what the Authors Guild is doing here. I really do. I believe this “conversation” needs to commence. Writers—particularly writers of the Take Care of Me school—need to understand that their publishers and their agents are not their friends. Those two entities are in business for themselves and will devise contract terms to benefit them. But…

Here’s what I wish: I wish that writers had business sense. I wish that they would then use their collective multimillion dollar clout to fight the real war, the one that the music industry is slowly turning its attention to.

My writing process is just plain goofy sometimes. Two weeks ago, I started what I thought would be a short blog post on why writers disappear. I had just given talk on the topic, and felt that it wouldn’t take much time to make it into a blog post. Um…never mind. Three posts later, I’m just finishing up. Apparently I can talk faster than I […]

On July 24, 2012, Canada’s The Globe and Mail published an article titled, “There Will Be No More Professional Writers in The Future.” The article cites a number of writers, from the ubiquitous Scott Turow to Ewan Morrison who, The Globe and Mail thoughtfully tells me, is “an established British writer.” Morrison says that the advances he’s received from traditional publishers have been slashed to the […]

If you read mainstream publishing news, like I do, occasionally your head will explode. Or you’ll run around in a panic, turning into one of those long-haired barefoot New Yorker cartoon characters, carrying a sign saying that the world is about to end. For many in traditional publishing, the world is ending. Their clout is vanishing and their ability to understand what is going on […]

The Business Rusch: Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain Kristine Kathryn Rusch The curtains are rustling. In some gilded office, a little dog with a lot of attitude has taken a green curtain in his teeth and has pulled it aside, revealing a rather plain and disappointing figure pulling a bunch of lever and shouting into a microphone. Welcome to the […]

The Business Rusch: Those Pesky Bestselling Writers Again (Changing Times Part Ten) Kristine Kathryn Rusch I finished the first draft of the book yesterday, my brain is made of Swiss cheese, and now I’m faced with this post. When I finish it, I’ll collapse on the couch and let visions of sugar plums dance in my head for a few days. Or I would, if […]

The Business Rusch: Bestselling Writers Continued (Changing Times Part Nine) Kristine Kathryn Rusch It’s dark and raining and cold, prime winter weather here on the Oregon Coast. I have a hot mug of tea beside me, and holiday music on the stereo (iPod dock, if you want accuracy). I have 50 to 100 pages to go on my current novel, and I’d like to finish […]

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